Lover, mine is a cursed heart~
A hobby of mine is writing love letters. Some I send, and others never see the light of day or the intended’s inbox. It’s one of my passions, like writing, listening to music, reading a good book or sitting in a broken down beach chair on the edge of the shore scrunching my toes in the sand as the waves break over my feet. I’d always enjoyed writing letters, now emails, to friends, but it wasn’t until I had the good fortune of living and breathing romantic love that I discovered my passion for writing love letters.
I was a firm non-believer in loving and longing, enduring passion and electricity, between two people, until I felt his touch. From the instant, he kissed me until our last kiss it was always the same for me, like the first time. My skin tingled, little tremors exploded throughout my body, how well our hands fit together, a glove over hand, second skin, and knowing his hands belonged on my body. It was that sort of fit; we were waiting for that moment of connection. My heart swelled until it bursted. During our affair—romantic love would only ever be an affair of the heart—I wrote pages, if not volumes of love letters.
I know that if a heart bursts a person dies, but having lived romantic love up close and personal and having first had knowledge of what it feels like when your brain is hooked on love, then bursting is what a heart does. I’ve felt my skin tingle at the brush of hand, and that damn heart of mine—burst, more like my chest cracked open. If love were a liquid, mine gushed out and filled the bubble that I inhabit. I troll through my old letters as often as my heart allows. It’s gooey for certain, but it’s a writer’s treasure strove. As I read my letters to him last night my skin grew hot, smoldering, and eventually my humiliation burned the skin right off my body as I read every single pathetic word. My soul howled “HOW COULD YOU?” I myself wondered the same, and thought perhaps someone had stolen my identity and written those letters, using my voice, my font, and my email address because surely I would never do anything so utterly stupid as to write someone all those inside thoughts that I keep tethered tightly to my soul. I hoped for half a second it wasn’t me (as I always do after I read those letters), but it was, and after an hour of reading I staggered to the kitchen for a filled to the rim, glass of wine.
I read an article a few years back in the Los Angeles times about the brain hooked on love. It stood me still, at last a name for my illness, I remember reading. Be still my beating heart, all good things come to those who wait, I said to myself. I read with haste, devouring each word, one by one, then two by two, and then full sentences in one inhale, greed replaced patience. I reached the end of the article disappointed to find there was no known cure, no studies at the Mayo Clinic, no clinical trials to volunteer for. It was early days in the study. I smiled knowingly, and whisper to the wind; absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.
My love story includes all the juicy scenes a reader finds in a Harlequin novel:
In less than ten seconds, his hands had my bra unfastened and his month was full with my breast. His geeky façade melted around him the instant my left leg wrapped around his waist, is an overt invitation for his expertly skilled hand to travel in the direction of my panties.
But as my story is missing the ‘happily ever after’ chapter it’s not Harlequin, it’s a woman’s story with the heroine growing as a result of the passionate romance, but knowing that life is a climb, my heroine moves forward, alone and wounded, but still standing, and smiling because there are no regrets. I remain in stasis, hooked on love and continue to write love letters.
Yours, until there is a cure for hearts such as mine.
I can still taste the inside of your kiss, even now.
